Join Our Expert Community In Refining the Practice And Study of Designing for Experience

Design for Experience (DfE) is a community organization of passionate experience design professionals, thought leaders, and academics devoted to maturing practices related to human-centered research, design, strategy, and engineering.

Our primary, flagship program is UX Magazine, a comprehensive, free resource that connects an audience of 150,000+ people to high-quality content, resource, and opportunities for professional improvement. We also launched the first international Design for Experience Awards program to bring recognition to people, teams, products, services, and companies that have achieved success in the field of experience design.

We're also busy working on a community-driven initiative to produce an open-source, comprehensive set of curricula and educational materials to improve educational opportunities in and access to the UX field. As part of that effort, we've begun offering classes in user-centered principles and practices. Through our Research Initiative, we're working to bridge the realm of experience-oriented practice to that of academic and commercial scientific research so we can put more research into practice and raising practical questions up the ivory tower.

Sign up for updates about DfE & opportunities to get involved.

DfE Education Initiative:User-Centered Practices Made Practical

Design for Experience (DfE), working in partnership with UX Magazine, has launched a community-driven initiative to address gaps and challenges in educational opportunities in user-centered design, UX, experience design, and other strategic, business, research, design, and technical realms that enable people to improve experiences in products and services.

To help raise awareness and understanding of experience design, we're offering a limited set of courses for business professionals that will decode the principles that underlie user-centered design, UX, and design thinking. This knowledge will enable anyone to build better products and services, and boost their careers and professional abilities.

The challenge: making UX and design thinking a benefit to everyone at every stage of a project lifecycle

It’s clear that we’re living in an "experience economy." While UX professionals have long understood the importance of designing for experience, too often they’ve struggled to give their business, technology, and product colleagues a clear understanding of its benefits. UX and related concepts can be employed by and benefit every team member at every stage of a project’s lifecycle; they don't have to be mysterious, obligatory steps forced into project processes. And the value of design need not be limited to visual aesthetics and upfront planning.

Bottom line: you don't have to be a UX specialist to employ UX concepts yourself, nor do you need artistic abilities to use design to solve challenging problems. Our courses demystify user-centered design practices and design thinking to show how their underlying principles and problem-solving techniques have immediate usefulness in business terms.

The opportunity

If you're involved in creating technology products, services, and other experiences, our courses will enable you to understand and employ key strategies, perspectives, techniques, and artifacts that derive from the UX realm. Whether you're hands-on in product design or you're working alongside others who are, your work and career will benefit from knowing how to build higher quality experiences with greater ease and reduced risk.

Upcoming classes

Our classes are principally taught in-person with a mixture of presentations and workshops given leading industry professionals, supplemented by participatory, collaborative projects and out-of-classroom experiences.

Despite high demand, we’re currently limiting availability to ensure the class experience is highly focused and relevant to attendees. Please register below to be invited to join a scheduled or future class.

User-Centered Design for Business & Product Professionals

You will gain a fundamental understanding of the range of UX and user-centered design methods and practices in terms of their practical usefulness, and be ready to immediately apply them toward product design efforts, whether independently, in collaboration with others, or in an oversight role.

Targeted toward technical leads, project managers, entrepreneurs, and other business professionals, this course provides a strong foundation in how to utilize the principles of user-centered design in practical, real-world business situations. The course emphasizes how to apply these principles regardless of budget and team limitations in the context of small project teams, lean/agile methodologies, and/or startup environments by using scrappy, low-cost, "guerilla" techniques.

The course covers key components of UX and user-centered design, including research, ideation, prototyping, implementation, testing, and presentation. The class structure will include lectures and workshops by leading industry professionals, 1-2 field trips to visit companies and settings that exemplify user-centered thinking, and collaborative projects that put the principles and methods into practice.

This course is structured to provide hands-on learning, and attendees will engage with each other and with instructors in a participatory format. Optional in-class time and out-of-class instructional materials will be offered in a way that allows flexibility in balancing learning with busy schedules.

Important note

Exact meeting days, times, and locations will be decided based on what best suits attendee needs. Due to strong demand and limited class size, we may not be able to accomodate everyone in this class. If interest is strong enough to fill multiple separate classes, we will work directly with prospective attendees to form separate classes that group attendees with others in similar roles, and according to scheduling preferences and constraints.

Classroom hours

2 core hours with up to 1 hour of optional activities afterwards

Instructor-led time

24 core hours with up to 12 optional hours

Class size

16 to 20 people

Cost

$1750, discounts available for partner organizations and case-by-case according to needs